


Imperfect Works

by cruellae (tinkabelladk)



Category: Xenogears
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 16:37:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15247425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinkabelladk/pseuds/cruellae
Summary: This is a collection of missing scenes from the game that explore the interactions between the characters a little more deeply. Most of them are centered around Citan.Many liberties will be taken with the lore.~it's been twenty years, but I still feel like I should mention that this will eventually contain ALL the spoilers~





	1. Guardian Angel

It was early morning, and the mist lingered on the mountaintop like a sheet pulled over the rocky soil. Outside the kitchen window, Yui watched as Citan practiced the forms of his martial art, moving from one stance to the next with a flowing grace that she had always admired and loved.  
Some mornings she would step out onto the dirt and spar with him. But today she was content to watch, a cup of coffee in her hand, the steam rising from the surface joining the rest of the mist the sun hadn’t banished yet. 

Moments like this made her remember why she loved him. He was a weapon, in body and mind, but a beautiful one, a deliberate one, a discerning one. She could forgive him for the secrets he kept and his service to Solaris, a devotion she never understood. Shevat had taken him in as one of its own, yet he kept his clandestine meetings with Cain, and followed the emperor’s plan, and never explained why. 

He told her once, in bed, when the darkness granted a deeper level of intimacy, that he had a plan for something more. That he would make her proud. “Trust me,” he’d said. “If you love me, trust me.”

And so she did. Or tried to. But each time he slipped away to Solaris to report back to the Ministry, doubts crept in. 

In the cool morning air, everything was still and silent for a few seconds as he held the final pose of his kata, and then straightened and stood, bowing to the sky. 

He turned towards Yui and smiled at her. She held out the mug of coffee and he took it, letting his fingers brush hers. Even now, those little touches stirred her heart. 

A little hand tugged at her long peasant’s skirt, and she looked down to see her silent child, staring up at her. Midori’s hair was still messy from sleep, and she wore a wrinkled white nightgown. 

“Good morning, sweetheart,” Citan said. He handed the mug of coffee back to Yui and swung Midori into his arms. She rested her head against his shoulder and smiled. When her parents were happy, she seemed to be happy as well, absorbing their moods as though she was breathing them in. 

I should be content with this, Yui thought, watching Citan speak softly and playfully to their daughter about the adventure they’d have today. This should be everything I need. A loving family. A welcoming home. A simple life. It should be enough. 

And yet—she did not become a knight of Shevat to sit at home and sew curtains and fix dinner for her husband when he came home from a day of playing country doctor. She wondered if he was restless as well, if he had ever regretted making that promise to her father and setting his sword aside. She had to admit she missed crossing swords with him, and more than that, she missed the sharp edge he once had, the deadly will now stifled by his current disguise. People in the village thought him eccentric, quirky, harmless. If only they knew he had almost brought a city to its knees, and that only his affection for her saved Shevat from destruction at his hand. That shouldn’t be so alluring—but it was, and always had been, and now, in this simple, humble, peaceful life, she missed it. 

“Would you two like some breakfast?” she asked, breaking out of her thoughts and coming back to the present. 

Midori nodded eagerly, and the three went inside to start the day properly. Yui made a large breakfast, eggs, pancakes, bacon, and potatoes. When Citan remembered to eat—when he wasn’t busy tinkering or experimenting—he ate heartily, as though to make up for the meals he’d missed. Ot perhaps it had to do with growing up in dire poverty. His tales from Solaris, especially the time before he’d been accepted to Jugend, were bleak. He didn’t speak of it often, but Yui had coaxed the stories out of him, gently, in the darkness of their bedroom, where it seemed easier for him to speak of things that haunted him. 

“Alice and Timothy are getting married,” Yui said. “They’ve asked Midori to be their flower girl.”

“I see.” Citan had a slight smile, and he glanced at his daughter. “Do you want to?”

Midori hesitated, then gave a slight nod. 

“Alice is sewing her a dress,” Yui said. She had been surprised by this simple kindness from a woman she only knew from the market and the occasional cup of tea in Alice’s mother’s cramped living room. 

“That’s very kind of her,” Citan said. 

Midori reached out and tugged at Yui’s pale pink blouse. 

“It’s pink?” Citan asked, a connection that would have taken Yui a few more seconds to make. The agility of his mind made it easier for him to understand Midori’s spare gestures and expressions. 

Midori nodded, a hint of a smile on her usually solemn face. 

“It’s going to be beautiful,” Yui said. 

#

Fei Fong Wong came up to the house at dinnertime. He brought Yui an egg, which she accepted with a smile, even though she wasn’t sure what kind of egg it was or where it had come from, or even if it was safe to eat. But Fei presented it so earnestly, with a hopeful smile. He seemed determined to do good in the world, perhaps trying subconsciously to balance out the damage done by his other half. Yui hadn’t wanted to like him, because she knew how dangerous he was. She hadn’t wanted him in her house, near her child. 

But when she asked Midori about Fei, Midori had put her hands together and pillowed her head on them, a gesture that Citan and Yui took to mean Id was sleeping, lying dormant. Everything they’d seen since coming to Lahan seemed to indicate the same. So Yui relaxed, somewhat, allowing Fei in her house, where he played tag with Midori, coaxing giggles out of the reticent girl, and forced Citan to talk about something other than gears and chemistry. Fei was a good man, and Yui began to see that he and the demon of Elru truly were two separate entities, not halves of a whole. At least, that’s what she wanted to believe. 

Standing in the kitchen puzzling over the mystery egg, Yui heard faint music coming from Citan’s lab. She peered out the kitchen window in time to see a white flash through the open door of the lab, and the music stopped abruptly. Fei stepped out into the yard, looking dazed. He walked behind the lab, and after a few moments Citan came back to the kitchen, clucking his tongue and shaking his head. 

“I thought music might bring back some of his memories,” Citan said, staring distantly out through the window. “But…nothing. And then the box broke. An omen, perhaps?”

“I hope not,” Yui said. 

Citan hummed a vague response, tapping his foot gently against the stone floor. Yui could tell he’d barely even heard her, his mind already ten moves ahead, tracing the patterns of his cold designs, his plans so secret he couldn’t entrust them even to his wife.


	2. The destruction of Lahan

Citan watched as Fei made his way into the forest, glumly tromping off into the underbrush. When he turned back to the encampment, all of Lahan’s survivors had already resumed their positions of mourning and fear, the man—the good, kind man—they’d exiled, forgotten. Only Yui was watching him, worry in her eyes. 

“I’ll go after him,” he said to her. “In a few days time.”

“To protect him?” she asked. “Or to serve your masters?”

He gave her a surprised glance. They didn’t speak of Solaris, of the Gazel or his loyalty to the city that tried to destroy her homeland. Their marriage depended on this mutual, unspoken promise. But among the rubble of Lahan, the rubble of the simple life they’d built and were pretending to live, she spoke of it anyway. 

“It can’t be both?” he asked. 

Her mouth pressed into a thin line. Her narrow features, her delicate nose and sharp pointed chin, were as beautiful as the day they met, even though a smudge of ash stained her cheek and her hair was messy and unwashed. She—ever the noble warrior—had been helping people search through the rubble, and fighting off the occasional hob that came too close to the destroyed village. He loved this about her, the selflessness that was required of a knight of Shevat, the proud way she held her head even as she hung sheets from the laundry to dry in the backyard, and then practiced her swordplay among them, so deft with a blade she never cut a single thread. She was the only person who had ever been able to match him, with steel and with intellect, and her strength of will far surpassed his own. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, and gestured helplessly to the ruins of their simple, honest (more or less) life. This destruction was more his doing than Fei’s—Fei had no knowledge of the beast that slept inside him, but Citan had known. Citan had known from the beginning, and let the charade continue anyway. He had no way of seeing the exact shape of the eventual outcome, but he knew it would be bloody, and still he followed orders. 

“You should kill him,” Yui had said, when Fei was first deposited in the village infirmary, wounded and barely conscious. Citan had understood her ruthless pragmatism, and if all that mattered to him had been Lahan, and its tranquil inhabitants, he would have agreed. Looking around now, he could count the lives he would have saved had he done so. 

But he could see further than this moment of devastation and the many to come. Fei was a means to an end, the key to a lock, and to wait for another that wasn’t so badly damaged would take more time than Citan had. 

And Fei was good—wholesome and kind in a way that made Citan glad to know him. Solaris was a place of schemers and backstabbers, where status was everything and the higher you got, the more people you crushed under your heel. Fei would not have lasted a day there, with his gentle heart and his fervent determination to believe the best of people, even of Citan. 

Fei even won Yui over, with his earnest compliments on her cooking, his eagerness to help her with whatever she was doing, and of course, the way Midori doted on him. Yui never said anything, but Citan could tell in the way her eyes crinkled as she smiled at the young man that she was glad Citan hadn’t followed her advice. Of course, back then, the possibility of violence Fei might bring to Lahan was an abstract future, not, as it was now, a tangible pile of corpses being gathered for a pyre. 

Yui took Citan’s hand and laced their fingers together. They were neither of them demonstrative people, able to communicate with a glance and a brush of fingertips what others might express more overtly. 

“Is it so terrible,” she began, “that I am relieved?”

Citan glanced at her, but she was staring out at the forest, proud chin aloft, the sun shining on her pale skin. “Nothing you could do is terrible,” he said. 

“It’s just…” she looked over at Midori, who was sitting on a rock near the edge of the village, knees drawn to her chest, looking away from them. Out of earshot, but you never did know what Midori could intuit or understand. “I was bored, Citan. And now, even with this death and destruction, all I can think is that this is the start of something that will tip the balance of the world, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said. 

“Fei will need Weltall,” she said, staring out into the forest again. 

“I know. I have a way to bring it to him.”

“When will I see you again?” she asked, looking up at him. 

“Soon,” he said, though they both knew that might be a lie. “Take Midori to Shevat. I’ll find you there when I can.”

She nodded, and he could sense sadness beneath her warrior’s grace and poise. He wondered if she missed him as fervently as he missed her, when they weren’t together. 

“Until then,” she said. 

He pressed a gentle kiss to her lips. “Until then.”


	3. Sons of Aveh

Sigurd watched with dismay as Bart and the powerful gear he’d been battling sunk through the sand. The young master was too hotheaded for his own good, and today it had landed him in serious trouble. 

“There must be a cavern underneath,” Old Maison pointed out, as Brigandier sank beneath the dunes, Bart still shouting at the other gear. 

“It’s got to let out somewhere,” Sigurd said. “Franz, can you get any readings?”

“Wait,” the chief engineer said, staring through the periscope. “There’s someone else on that Aveh ship.” 

“Preparing missiles,” said the gunner, as Sigurd took the periscope. “Fire on your command, sir.”

“No,” Sigurd said. “We’re taking him prisoner. We don’t kill unless we have to, and he’s no threat. Prepare to board and I’ll take a team to capture him.”

“Yes sir,” said the gunner, but she sounded disappointed. 

Sigurd was expecting to come across some low level Aveh lackey, blindly loyal to Shakhan and barely worth the trouble to rescue. He didn’t expect Hyuga Ricdeau to be standing atop the sinking sand ship, waving at him. 

It took him a second to recognize Hyuga—his hair was long and pulled back in a queue, and he wore a flowing green tunic instead of his army uniform. But his laughing eyes were the same, as though they’d never left the halls of Jugend. 

Sigurd held up a hand for his team to stand back, and crossed the boarding plank himself. He wasn’t sure how to greet Hyuga, who, rumor had it, was still working for Solaris. But Hyuga crossed the distance between them and hugged him, smiling when they stepped apart. 

“It’s been a long time, Sig,” he said. 

“Hyuga.” Sigurd laughed. “You’re the last person I expected to see out here.”

“It’s Citan, please. And—I’m a doctor, from the mountains. A surface-dweller.”

Sigurd stepped back, barely aware of the sinking Aveh ship shifting beneath their feet. “You still work for them,” he whispered, the venom in his voice making it clear who he meant. “Hyuga, I thought you would have seen through their lies by now.”

“Sigurd—” The ship bucked again beneath their feet, enough to make them both stumble. “We had better get to safety. Then I’ll explain.”

They hurried across the plank and into the Yggdrasil, leaving Sigurd’s boarding team to follow silently. 

“Confine him to Margie’s quarters,” Sigurd said to the team, who looked confused, but moved to do as he asked. Margie’s quarters were, unfortunately, the only empty rooms on the ship at the moment. The team wouldn’t stand much of a chance if Hyuga were to fight back, but Sig was counting on Hyuga’s habitual courtesy. 

He forced himself to focus, giving Franz the orders to find an entrance to the caverns Bart had fallen into, then gave the helm to the chief engineer, who grinned eagerly as he took over. 

As he took the elevator down to the lower levels of the ship, Sigurd let out a long sigh, leaning back against the cool metal wall. He’d missed his fellow Element—he missed all of them, in fact—but a Solarian Guardian Angel was the last person he wanted on his ship, no matter how much he might care about his friend Hyuga.

Why was he undercover? What sinister errands did the Gazel have for him? 

Two guards sat outside Margie’s room, two more inside, watching Hyuga suspiciously, though Hyuga seemed perfectly at ease, stretched out in a plush chair with his feet on the ottoman. Sigurd dismissed them all. 

“Why are you here?” he asked, trying to put distance between them with the terse question. 

Hyuga raised an eyebrow. “Would you believe me if I said it was a coincidence?”

Sigurd crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. “No.” 

Hyuga leaned forward in the chair, and was silent a moment, foot tapping restlessly on the carpet. “Sig,” he said, “I can’t tell you, and it’s better for you if you don’t know.”

Sigurd knew it was useless to press for answers. “I want you off this ship.”

“I can help you re-take Aveh.” 

“I don’t trust you,” Sigurd said. The words tasted like ash, but he meant them. Hyuga had been one of his closest friends, but he was a Solaris agent, just like Kahran Ramsus. Sigurd had given up everything to escape that place, and he wasn’t going to let Solaris’s evil extend to the sanctuary he’d found on the surface. 

“It will be difficult,” Hyuga said. “It will take some time. But Sigurd—I will make you a promise. With my help you will retake Aveh, and I won’t abandon the cause until it’s done.” 

Sigurd knew that Hyuga did not make promises he did not intend to keep. His loyalty and morality were flexible; they always had been. But his promises were as true as the cold steel of his sword. 

“Aveh is not your ultimate goal,” Sigurd said. 

“No. It’s a step on the way. But why should that matter to you? You’ll have your kingdom, your brother will sit on the throne, and you will have avenged your father.”

Sigurd desperately wanted that, and if Hyuga said it could be done, if Hyuga was willing to promise it… He’d always thought retaking Aveh was impossible, a daydream to keep Bart and Margie from despair. But now, listening to Hyuga’s promise, he felt the first rays of hope. 

“Okay,” he said, and Hyuga smiled, the expression so familiar and dear to him that his heart ached. Why did they have to be enemies, this time? 

“I am a Solarian Guardian Angel,” Hyuga said, “but my wife and daughter belong to Shevat. My world is not like yours, Sig, it’s not black and white. There’s so much to the story you don’t know. Please trust me, when I say I have always been your friend.”

“I know,” Sig murmured. “Whatever the circumstances, I’m glad you see you, Hyuga.” 

The ship’s intercom crackled to life. “We’ve found the entrance to the cavern, Sir. We’re picking up faint radio readings—it might be the young master.”

Sigurd sighed with relief. “Thank goodness.” 

Hyuga followed him down the hall and into the elevator. 

“Who was that in the blue gear?” Sigurd asked him, as the elevator took them slowly upward. 

Hyuga gave him a slight, sly smile. “The weapon that’s going to help you retake Aveh.”


End file.
